Israel-Iran Conflict Drives Oil Prices, Meta Monetizes WhatsApp, & Tron’s IPO Grift
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back to focusing on what really matters. Welcome to Profiteer Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is June 17th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals.

The major indices rallied on the news that Iran wants to de-escalate the conflict with Israel even as strikes continued. The Dow recovered nearly half of its Friday losses, the S&P advanced 1%, and the Nasdaq surged 1.5% as tech led the charge. Meanwhile, oil prices fell after spiking over the weekend, more on that in a moment, and after hitting a record high Friday, gold fell 1% as investors retreated slightly from the safe haven asset.

Okay, what else is happening? Oil prices were on the move after the conflict between Iran and Israel escalated over the weekend.

The initial attacks by Israel sent oil prices up around 7% on Friday. Brent crude hit a high point of $74 per barrel, which is actually lower than the average for 2024, but it's still a lot higher than where it was about a month ago. The markets continued to waver, but then yesterday, after the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran is now signaling it wants to de-escalate this conflict, the price of oil came back down. It closed the day 2% lower.

So this is a very serious and

scary situation that is unfolding. And I don't think the story here is what's happening to the price of oil. The story here is obviously the war between Iran and Israel and what could happen if this war escalates any further. That is what matters here. And I'm also not here to give you any trading tips on how to play this conflict. That's not of interest to me. I don't think it should really be of interest to anyone. But the reason the price of oil is worth paying attention to

is that it does provide some worthy context on this situation that is quite difficult to pass out. And I think the question a lot of people have been asking is, how bad is this? You know, is this World War III? Is this the precipice of a nuclear situation? Is this war going to spread further across the Middle East and perhaps

towards the West? Those are the questions that I have been hearing. And I don't know the answers to those questions. I'm not a geopolitical analyst, but I can look at the price of oil.

And if you look at the price of oil today, the answer to those questions would be no. The initial jump we saw on Friday was quite scary, and it was a similar one-day increase to what we saw in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. But unlike that invasion, where the price of oil continued to surge, what we have seen thus far is some moderation. This is the market telling us we're worried, but

but we're not that worried. The conflict remains relatively contained. Iran is still in quite a weak position. And even though Israel did target Iran's domestic oil facilities, its international export facilities, those are still intact, and Iran can still participate in the global oil economy. So in sum, the market seems to believe that the situation is relatively manageable.

And it certainly does not believe that we have a World War III on our hands, which is

everyone was understandably worried about. Having said that, we don't know what's going to happen next, and there are huge tail risks in all of this. I mean, Israel has proven it could cripple Iran if it wanted to. And if it decided to take that route, if, for example, it decided to attack those export facilities that I mentioned, then suddenly Iran would have a lot less to lose, and the situation could

spiral out of control. These are all very real possibilities, and I'm not going to predict what is or isn't going to happen. But if you look at the markets, and if you look at the price of oil today, your best bet here would be that the situation is somewhat under control. Now, we wanted to find out more about this, specifically about how investors are pricing in all of this uncertainty.

So our producer Claire spoke with Rebecca Babin, senior energy trader at CIBC Private Wealth. The real tail risk here is that Israel pushes Iran to a point where they throw a Hail Mary and they try to start targeting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran exports 1.6 million barrels a day out of the 103 million we consume.

If you target the Strait of Hormuz, that's 20 million barrels of crude and product that flows through there that could therefore be impacted. In that scenario, the math that people have done put crude at going to something over $100 a barrel, maybe $120 a barrel, if the Strait of Hormuz flows are actually impacted. This is a very low probability.

Right. This is why crude isn't reacting. The place you see this is being priced and this might be really kind of in the weeds is in the option market. Crude oil options. People are buying those kind of tail hedge options to kind of hedge themselves for that event. And so those options have gotten very expensive.

It's not what people think is going to happen, but the outside chance has gone from like a 1% probability to now people saying it's a 10% to 12% probability. In terms of Iranian supply, if we do see Israel hit those export facilities...

We're like we're down today. We will absolutely rally. I think there will be a five to 10 percent rally on that, not only because it solidifies or crystallizes the fact that supply will be impacted, whereas right now we're just fearing that reality.

but it'll also very likely lead to a significant next step in escalation. And we don't all know what that next step would be, but we know the Strait of Hormuz is the threat that Iran has already always used. So that's where the market's mind is going to go. So you would see a very significant reaction if that were to happen. There's a tremendous amount of uncertainty in terms of what they're targeting, how they're doing it.

But as of right now, looking at it, it doesn't look like they want to go that direction. So I think something would have to change to make that happen. Most analysts would reference a significantly large amount of civilian casualties in Israel might be that red line that would push that type of action. And the crude market for sure is not priced for that right now. That was Rebecca Babin, trader at CIBC Private Wealth.

somewhat assuring, but as she says, still extremely uncertain. So we will keep tabs on this.

Meta is finally bringing ads to WhatsApp. The company announced yesterday that businesses will now be able to run what they call status ads on the app. Those ads will be displayed in the WhatsApp updates tab, which will be kept separate from your personal conversations. Meta will also start monetizing WhatsApp's channels feature with search ads and subscriptions. Meta shares rose 2.5% on that news.

So a lot of people are a little upset about this. I think they're especially upset considering that WhatsApp's whole thing before they were acquired by Facebook was that they did not run ads. And that was 11 years ago when Facebook acquired the company for $19 billion. Now here we are 2025, WhatsApp is running ads.

And I get it. Ads are annoying. No one likes them. And if you're a power user of WhatsApp, you're probably not happy about this news. But if there's anyone out there who is surprised by this or shocked that WhatsApp would go against their word, all I would tell you is that you haven't been paying attention. Because if there's anything we've learned about the digital economy in the past 10, 15, 20 years, it's that everything will at one point or another change.

be subsidized by ads, whether it's YouTube or recently Netflix or even Uber and DoorDash, which are, as we discussed in yesterday's episode, increasingly becoming ad companies. Both of those companies are estimated to have generated more than a billion dollars in ad revenue last year. So the way I would put it is that in 2025, there's no such thing as an ad-free lunch. And WhatsApp was never an exception to that rule, and it never was going to be an exception to that rule.

They've got roughly 3 billion users around the world, half of which interact with that updates tab every single day. So by our very conservative estimates, this is going to generate nearly $4 billion in additional ad revenue for Meta. That's an annual increase of 3%. So this is a great, and more importantly, easy opportunity for Meta. And it was never a question of if they were going to monetize. It was always a question of when.

Now, as it happens, our own Scott Galloway is parting it up at Cannes Lions right now, which is the mecca of the advertising industry. Perhaps he's learned something. So let's check in on what's happening in Cannes. ♪

Scott, how's it going? It's going really well, Ed. I'm here at the Hotel du Cap. So yeah, everything's great. Give us a little more of a view of what's going on at the Hotel du Cap. That's probably the most famous hotel in the world. Not a lot going on here, though. The happening is the iHeart Media Party, which I did not get invited to, but I'm going to go down anyways and tell them I know Ed Olson. Oh, that would be nice. I'm surprised you didn't get invited to the iHeart Party, considering you won the iHeart Award last year.

How does that make sense? Yeah, it doesn't make sense. And I'm lying. Of course, I'm invited. Anyway, so let's talk about WhatsApp. So WhatsApp, they're starting monetizing it. It's kind of shocking it took them this long. The revenue estimates will be overestimated because the places WhatsApp is strongest have the lowest monetization in the U.S. Meta gets about 70 bucks a person hour through.

in the markets where whatsapp is strongest it doesn't get nearly that monetization it gets a dollar to five dollars however it'll be incremental revenue growth so they'll get analysts decided around the potential you know whatsapp is i think is arguably the biggest

messaging company or phone telco. I would just hate to be AT&T or Verizon right now in a world of WhatsApp. I find WhatsApp is actually more dependable than AT&T and Verizon. And the thing that strikes me is Mark Zuckerberg has made two of the three or four best acquisitions in history. Instagram at a billion, probably objectively worth two to 300 billion now. And WhatsApp, everyone thought he was fucking crazy for spending 19 billion on WhatsApp, a company with nearly zero revenue.

And that looked like it's probably going to add $100 or $200 billion in market cap if you were to suss it out. And this is going to be a great story for them in earnings calls. They'll be able to report huge increases in revenue on their WhatsApp division. Now, you are at Cannes, which is, I would call, the advertising mecca. You're at the heart of it all.

So what are the takeaways so far from Cannes? And specifically, what are these ad executives thinking with respect to Meta and potentially with respect to this new update from WhatsApp? I think the vibe is the same. And that is we're in our 30s and 40s. We have good jobs. We get to come to Cannes. And the oxygen is being sucked out of the room slowly. So let's enjoy it while we can. I don't.

I mean, if you think about it, publicity, which is really interesting, was kind of pulled away from WPP and Omnicom, and it's now worth $25 or $26 billion. So WPP is $8 billion. And I was at Salesforce today. They have a new kind of, you can tell who's growing and who isn't. Salesforce has a beach now.

And their market cap is $250 billion. So Salesforce is worth quintuple, five times what the entire ad industry, the traditional ad industry is worth. And then down the beach, you have Meta and Alphabet, who are worth five times what Salesforce is worth. So it's kind of like, it's kind of, you know, what I can is what I call an extended last meal for the advertising business. Just pulse marketing.

What share of people that you're hanging out with or meeting work for big tech, would you say? And has it increased since you were there, say, 10 years ago? Oh, there's no comparison. It used to be one in 10. Now it's one in three. And 80% of the good parties are being financed or paid for by big tech. So, you know, let me put it this way.

Big tech might only have a third of the people here, but they're definitely on top. They've really taken over. It's just striking how over the last 10 years how the world has changed. I mean, whoever thought I'd be hosting a podcast with a fucking 26-year-old? Anyways. Yeah.

All right. Well, we'll let you go enjoy your drinks on the beach with iHeart. Sounds very fun. I'm WPP, you're Meta. You're 2008, I'm 2008. I don't think that's true. There you go. Well, enjoy your night, Scott. Thanks for tuning in. All right, brother. Bonsoir. Take care. After the break, a crypto firm with ties to Trump is going public. Stay with us.

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Grow your career and your pay. Learn more at aboutamazon.com. We're back with Profiteer Markets. Crypto platform Tron will go public in the U.S. this year in a reverse merger with the publicly listed company SRM Entertainment. After the news was reported yesterday by the Financial Times, shares in SRM Entertainment surged 647%.

Now, that is obviously significant given the percentage increase, but it's also not that significant considering the market cap of the company, which is still quite small at $155 million. But it's the context around this reverse merger that really matters here and that we should really focus on. And I'm just going to go through some of the details in that context. So first detail.

In 2023, Tron and its founder, Justin Sun, were charged by the SEC over allegations that they had sold unregistered securities and engaged in market manipulation. That investigation was dropped, however, four months ago when Trump took office. The second important detail is that last month, Justin Sun, the founder, attended President Trump's crypto banquet as he was one of the top 24 holders of the Trump meme coin.

Justin Sun also invested $75 million into World Liberty Financial, which is a crypto company run by Trump's family. I will also note that President Trump personally derived $57 million in income from that company. The third detail, the investment bank that brokered this deal, this reverse merger, is a slightly obscure boutique bank known as Dominaria Securities. This bank is headquartered in New York.

It is more specifically headquartered in Trump Tower, and even more specifically, headquartered on the 23rd floor, two floors below the Trump Organization's office. A company filing also reveals two new appointments to the Dominaria Securities Advisory Board, and they are Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. So that's the third detail. And the fourth and final detail, which is the most important, Eric Trump is expected to take up a role in this company, which will be called Tron Inc.

So if the grift wasn't apparent to you before, let me just lay it out again for you now. A crypto founder who was charged with securities fraud and market manipulation.

who then bought millions of dollars worth of Trump coin and world liberty, who then got his fraud charges dropped by Trump's SEC, is now going public in a reverse merger that was brokered by the bank that is advised by Trump's children, and which will place Eric Trump in a leadership position of this new public company. I can't really believe it, but what I just said is a real and factually accurate sentence. That is actually happening.

And it's sad for so many reasons. I mean, one of which is the fact that the president has now become this investment vehicle in which you can basically park money to flout and escape the law. And another is the fact that this type of bribery can actually make you a lot of money. I mean, it's not a coincidence that the stock ripped more than 600%. But the part that really upsets me

is the fact that all of this grift is contingent on their going out and raising money in the public markets. It would be different if they were, say, going to Wall Street and pitching private institutional investors on all of their money laundering schemes. But the thing is, they know that that won't work because they know that the people on Wall Street are, frankly, too smart to buy into this bullshit.

So instead, what do they do? They go out to the public markets. And this is what they've done every time because they believe that the only person dumb enough to hand over their money to them like this is a Trump-loving retail investor who thinks Eric and Don Jr. are the geniuses who are going to make them rich. That's who they're going after. And look, you can call me pretentious and you can call me rude for saying that, but what I'm telling you is that's what they think. That's what they believe. And that's why they're doing this.

And so anytime you hear these guys talking about how much they love the American people, how much they love their supporters, how they love the base, just remind yourself, remember what they really think of the base. Just think of how lowly you would have to regard these people to rip them off as shamelessly as they've done. And keep in mind the fact that while a handful of insiders, including Justin Sun, by the way, made more than a billion dollars on that Trump coin, there are 600,000

thousand other small-time investors out there who have lost almost $4 billion on this so far. So this is just another story of grift and corruption in Trump's crypto network. We've seen it all before, but look, you can lock in this very easy prediction from me right now. It won't be the last. Okay, that's it for today. Thanks for listening to Profiting Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Ed Elson. I'll see you tomorrow.

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